Top Headlines 1/11

By |January 11, 2011

Karen de Sa of the Mercury News reports on California Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed plan to shift a lot of safety-net responsibilities to counties, including child welfare. Some at the county level are supportive in theory, she writes, but fear that the money passed down to them will be insufficient to get the job done. Brown has made a similar shifting proposal for juvenile justice services.

A partnership with Virginia Tech University has helped Virginia child welfare staff focus on families.

Education/Jobs

The Mercury News’ Lisa M. Krieger writes about Gov. Brown’s proposed education cuts, including $1 billion from the state’s university system and $400 million from community colleges.

Baltimore’s school turnaround receives long form treatment in this New Haven Independent feature by Melissa Bailey, who looks at such factors as the city’s ability to re-introduce school to dropouts and reduce absenteeism.

CBS Money Watch’s Dan Kadlec shares some research from his new book in this column on the student debt crisis, including that one in three college students who are in debt say the loan process makes it more difficult to concentrate on their studies.

A nice little breakdown of the latest unemployment figures in the stock market news site Seeking Alpha, including an analysis showing that despite accounting for just 3 percent of the entire U.S. workforce, jobs for teens represent 22 percent of the jobs lost over the past three years.

Michelle Rhee outlines the legislative agenda of her new education policy group Students First in this Wall Street Journal column.

Miscellaneous

What Do Political Shifts and State Budget Troubles Mean for Children’s Programs?js the topic of a conversation that the Urban Institute will hold Thursday with panelists including Olivia Golden, an institute fellow who is former head of the D.C. Child and Family Services, and Brenda Donald, who headed the Maryland Department of Human Services. Watch the webcast at 9 a.m. Thursday here.

Juvenile Justice

Megan Miller of Pennsylvania’s Beaver County Times reports on how two youngsters, being tried for similar heinous murders, face vastly different fates because of the states they live in.

Another great comparative piece – this one about the treatment of two juvenile murderers whose crimes were clearly borne of serious sexual abuse - from a blog called Ask a Woman Who Knows

Have something to submit for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s new Journal of Juvenile Justice? Click herefor details.